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Think about Wealth Differently

00:00 / 12:34

13 Oct 2024

Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

Mark 10:17-31

"Where money is an idol, to be poor is a sin."


A sermon on Jesus' teaching about wealth and riches from Fr Jamie Franklin.


“How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God!”


Each of us only has a certain amount of time and energy to spend in life.

Many people experience a moment of awakening when they realise that they have ended up spending it in something they don’t like very much, that isn’t too fulfilling, like a career that doesn’t pay that well or isn’t that enjoyable. And so they have a rethink and try to reorientate themselves.

In the story of the rich man who came to him asking what he had to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus is recommending a similar type of rethinking.

The test for this man is: Can you walk away?

And we see of course that he can’t. He wants to inherit eternal life. Maybe he even wants to follow Jesus. But the alternative is too stark: My wealth or eternal life? I suppose it’s got to be my wealth.


How did Jesus view wealth?

This rich man who came to Jesus, what was he hoping for? Perhaps he was hoping that Jesus would hire him as his director of charitable operations and that he could put his financial expertise to good use in Jesus’ new ministry.

Instead, Jesus tells him to do three things: sell all of his possessions, give to the poor, and then come and follow him – stripped of his wealth, his status, his identity, his place in the world.

“It is hard for the wealthy to enter the Kingdom of God,” he tells his astonished disciples, “Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.”

Yes, he adds that all things are possible with God, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy…far from it. Some among them might be saved but, if they’re anything like this man, probably not many.

Whatever Jesus thought about material wealth, it wasn’t that it’s a great thing that we should pursue more of.


The Power of Riches

There was once a Stoic philosopher called Seneca who said of the rich people he knew, “These individuals have riches just as we say that we ‘have a fever’, when really the fever has us.”

What he meant is that, when you look at rich people, they rarely seem happy. Their money has made them anxious that they will become poor again. Money has made them worry about their status in Rome. Money controls how they spend their time and the decisions they make. Money has attracted yes-men and fair-weather friends looking for a handout. Money has given them a taste for the high life so that nothing is good enough for them anymore.

They have lost all perspective on what actually makes you happy and fulfilled in life.

Jesus is trying to tell us something like this: You think that in riches you will find contentment, peace, security, and happiness, but actually you don’t realise that your wealth is enslaving you.

That is the tragedy that we see in the case of the rich man who couldn’t leave his wealth behind.

One early follower of Jesus put it like this:

‘Such, O my soul, are the miseries that attend on riches. They are gained with toil and kept with fear. They are enjoyed with danger and lost with grief.’ – St Augustine

Or, as one of the Biblical writers said:

‘Whatever overcomes a person – to that he is enslaved.’ – 2 Peter 1:19

Riches are, in fact, so powerful that Jesus went so far as to say that you cannot serve both God and mammon (meaning money).

There is something about money that is powerful: getting it doesn’t just take up your time and your energy, but it takes over your heart. You begin to care only about maintaining your bank balance and increasing it wherever possible. This becomes your life’s work.

Maybe you thought about attending to your soul once. Maybe you thought it might be nice to spend a bit more time in prayer and service to God. But you’ve left those thoughts far behind now. And trying to summon them again doesn’t do very much for you anymore.


True Riches

What is needed is some serious heart surgery. And there is only one prescription: get rid of it. This goes for everything, by the way, not just money: Whatever it is that is dominating your mind and your heart and leading you away from God, it must be diminished and maybe even cast aside completely.

The Stoics, one of whom I mentioned earlier, counselled a similar thing: to beware of the enslaving power of money and to realise its value relative to other goods in life. But Jesus takes us a step beyond even that: not just to be free from the power money can have over our lives, not only to use money for our true benefit and the benefit of others (although he would certainly agree with that), but to find another source of wealth that far surpasses all that the world offers us.

In his typically shameless way, Peter chimes in at this point, “See: We gave up all things and followed you.” He wants to know what the rich man would have got had he taken Jesus up on his offer. And Peter is not disappointed.

Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is not one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not – along with persecutions – receive a hundredfold now in this time houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands and in the age to come eternal life.”

What does that mean? What it probably doesn’t mean is that following Jesus will result in greater material wealth and prosperity. That would be a really strange thing for Jesus to say after telling a rich man to sell all his possessions.

What it must mean is that a life with Jesus offers another kind of prosperity: a richer, deeper, and fuller life, not dominated by the desire for more money and possessions, more status, more fame. Jesus offers freedom from enslavement to these desires, an abundance in this time now, and, in the age to come, everlasting life with God.

Jesus promises us a new family – brothers, sisters, mothers, children. He speaks here of the new family of God which we encounter primarily through the Church.  Now, of course, we know that the Church frequently fails to live up to what it should be (as every family does at times) but the Church is nevertheless a miraculous thing: an entirely new gathering of men, women, and children, previously unknown to each other, who are made one through the love of Christ.

Perhaps that sounds insignificant to you. Perhaps you are yet to experience the joy of God’s new family in the Church. Each of us has to decide upon the plausibility of Christ’s words. I can say that Christ’s words hold true for me: brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, houses, lands, all given to me as I have followed him. I don’t know what my life would have been like if I had pursued some other goal and ignored his calling, but I cannot imagine that it would be richer and fuller than what he has given me.

And why persecutions by the way? Because people will always be threatened and annoyed by those who don’t go along with status quo. They want you to be like them so they despise you when you are not.

As one American Christian said, “Where money is an idol, to be poor is a sin.” – William Stringfellow

Jesus’ advice: Don’t worry about what people think. Accept it as evidence of your sincerity and focus on the abundant, blessed life that I am offering you instead.


The Choice

G.K. Chesterton once said: “There is no such thing as success.…That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey.”

So the question is: At what would you like to be a success?

It’s not so much about the size of your bank balance but the hold that money has over your heart. If you have more of it, it’s likely to be harder. But, even so, people who are relatively poor can still be enslaved to the love of money.

Jesus offers the rich man a choice. He offers the same to us: You can either continue toiling to be wealthy in the eyes of the world or you can follow me and learn what true riches are. As Chesterton reminds us, either way you can be a success, but what is actually worth succeeding at?

And if you decide that you want true riches, Jesus gives us a really simple, three-step prescription:

Sell all that you have. And if you can’t do that, at least think about what you don’t need and get rid of it.

Give to the poor. Take your abundance and use it to serve those who are in need.

And come, follow me. Freed from the idol of money, wealth, riches, status, and fame, you will be free to pursue truly that which matters: a life with Jesus.

What will you choose?

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